


Paradox of Intimacy

by lmontyy



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Comfort, Confessions, Ellie - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Love Confessions, Mild Hurt/Comfort, TLOU, The Last of Us - Freeform, and now theyre in love, dina - Freeform, dina and ellie, dina x ellie, ellie and dina, ellie being a dumb bitch for 19 years straight, ellie williams, ellie x dina, the last of us 2, the last of us part 2 - Freeform, the last of us part ii, the last of us part two, they get stuck in a cabin, tlou 2, tlou part 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:47:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22133509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmontyy/pseuds/lmontyy
Summary: Ellie and Dina get trapped in an old, abandoned cabin after a sudden blizzard hits while they are separated from the rest of their patrol. It's been a whole day since the dance and their kiss, and they haven't spoken a word about what transpired between them on the dance floor. Ellie can't stand to be silent and ignorant about what happened any longer.
Relationships: Dina & Ellie (The Last of Us), Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 229





	Paradox of Intimacy

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by "Sun Balloon" by Crystal & Quiet! It's got such a good vibe to it, and I've been obsessed with the entire Sun Balloon album for days. You can find it on Soundcloud or Spotify! I highly recommend you listen as you read!

It was cold – indescribably cold – outside the blockaded door and thick, cold windows. The glass was painted over with frozen moisture and fog from the sheer temperature looming over the Jackson County area in Wyoming.

They were on the reserve just outside of the Jackson community, miles deep into frozen forest, hidden away under snowflakes that fell like feathers around them. That was, for a few hours. As afternoon creeped up on them and the clouds rolled over, the snow packed down on them harder and harder, and as the wind picked up, they had no choice but to take shelter.

Ellie and Dina being separated from the rest of the group and stranded alone for God knows how long was like Ellie’s worst nightmare.

It had been about approximately nineteen hours since the two girls shared a captivating kiss on the dancefloor of the Jackson church party. There had been few words exchanged between them that wasn’t excessive flirting or remarks at one another. Most of them were initiated by Dina, but, of course, that was no surprise. Ellie had no stomach to flirt with the girl she’d had a thing for throughout months and years of her being there, even after they kissed.

There was a cabin, half-buried in thick snow, concealed by the spruce trees that were blanketed in white and blowing against the harsh wind. It was the only shelter they could manage, but thankfully, it was intact.

They entered slowly, carefully into the undiscovered home, guns cocked and aimed, side by side, ready to blow the head off anything that suggested life. Room by room, they secured the house, and with every ounce of luck they had – which Ellie feared would run out any day now – they were in the clear. Ellie quickly barricaded the door while Dina assured that every window was locked or sealed off, protecting them from the rough environment, or any danger that could be out there lurking within it.

It was a cabin of good size; big with four bedrooms and three bathrooms. The front door opened into the main living area with a fireplace, couches and a high ceiling that arced upward. The kitchen and dining room was open to the living room, with the back door separating the dining table from the secluded kitchen, which sat underneath the wide staircase that stretched from the couches all the way across to the other wall. The fireplace was firmly placed against the stairs. The basement door was right at the end of the steps, against the wall adjacent to the couches.

Up the staircase was located all four bedrooms, two bathrooms connected to the two biggest bedrooms, and one separate and at the very end of the hall. Each room was void of any clothing, a few scattered rags and old shirts were sprinkled among the floor, with just a few old sundries that looked untouched for decades. One of the bedrooms had a dollhouse in the corner, sitting next to a dinosaur dresser and toybox. The bookshelf beside the bed was old and rotting, but the chipped purple paint gave away its design. It was clearly a child’s room. The room just beside it was similar, only meant for what seemed like a slightly older boy, with soccer ball stickers riddled throughout the room, a blue rug and a desk with a lamp that no longer worked. Whether the family resided there before or during the outbreak was unclear, but Dina had said she hoped that wherever they were, they were safe.

Setting their bags down by the door, the first thing both girls rushed to do after determining their safety was run to start a fire. Luckily for them, the cabin had a small indoor pile of logs – probably left by the previous family – sitting beside the fireplace, as well as an old, rusty stoker.

Ellie insisted she could start it, and reluctantly, Dina agreed, making her way towards the kitchen with hopes there was any wholesome, leftover food they could eat in order to avoid wasting their supply that they removed off their horses – which they promptly parked into the shed with whatever hay they had left.

It didn’t take long to get a flame going, and when she did, Ellie didn’t hesitate to warm herself up. Moving the couch as close as she could get without endangering the cushions, she curled up in an old and ragged, yet oddly comfortable blanket. She had found it and then some in the abandoned rooms upstairs.

“No go in the kitchen,” Dina called out with a sigh, letting the cabinets slam lightly in frustration.

“Fuck,” Ellie muttered. “That sucks.”

“We didn’t get a good look at the basement when we cleared it,” Dina reminded. “I’m gonna go take a look down there.”

Ellie turned over the side of the back cushion to get a better look at the girl who was headed for the door that led to the underground of the house.

“I could come with?” she suggested.

Dina smiled slyly at the girl planted on the couch. “Trying to get me alone in the basement, I see.” Her smirk was infuriating. “What for?”

“To help you find food for us, jackass,” Ellie retorted, face deadpanned and unamused. “You wish, anyway.”

Dina rolled her eyes playfully before starting towards the door again, having briefly paused to talk with Ellie, who still sat lazily on the couch. “I’m good, thanks.” She dismissed coldly, amusedly.

“Ouch,” Ellie placed a hand against her chest in feign hurt. “Whatever. Have fun digging through old garbage that no one’s used in decades and probably has all kinds of bugs living in it. Won’t be my problem.”

“I can handle myself,” Dina called out with that entertained tone as Ellie heard each step creak as she proceeded to the basement.

Ellie scoffed audibly, loudly enough for her to hear. “That’s funny.”

The squeak of her footsteps finally stopped. “Fuck you,” Her voice echoed from the basement.

“Fuck you, too.”

As Dina exited the picture, Ellie’s mind sank back down into thoughts, some of which she really wished she didn’t have. The memories of Dina’s lips against hers came flooding back, and she wanted to bash her head into the wall to remove them. Those soft lips were addicting – they were the only thing Ellie had wanted for so long. And she had finally got them, and yet, hardly a word about it from Dina. It was angering, infuriating, even.

The wind pushed against the glass, sending a draft in through the smallest cracks between each log that sat, one on top of the other, forming the walls of the cabin around them. The house must’ve been standing for so many years, endured so many storms, for there was no warmth that could relieve the chill she felt in her bones. Frost decorated the edges of each windowpane, the ledge a misty mess.

That damn storm had covered them out of nowhere, the dark clouds rolling over, the snow falling like rocks, heavy and dense, landing on their heads, their gear, the ground under their feet. The sun had been a sticky, honey yellow before the clouds conquered the sky. Each moment had begun to darken like the world around them.

She wished for nothing more than to be curled up on the couch back home, in front of a warm fire in a house with heat and the smell of Joel’s cooking. As much as she loved Dina, and as much as she wanted to be with her, she couldn’t swallow the anxiety she felt being around her after their kiss, especially without the closure she wanted and knew she deserved. Dina was the one who initiated it, after all.

All day, all night, at home, at work, on patrol, at dinner, on the couch, in her bed. Everywhere she was and everywhere she went she pictured herself being with Dina. On their patrols, she imagined what it would be like to kiss her and hold her hand as they walked through old, abandoned towns. At dinner, she wished Dina would be sitting next to her so that she could place her hand on her thigh in comforting fashion under the table. And then they would go to sit on the couch, maybe put on a movie, and she would bring her hand up to her broad shoulder in curious wonder, hoping that it would feel something like Dina’s head resting on there. And in her bed is where she felt the loneliest, but the most imaginative. Dina, resting beside her, sleeping, maybe. Or on top of her, kissing her with all of the passion of the world, letting Ellie take her in the darkest, coldest nights, heating her bed and warming them both eternally. Her mind created an entire other reality, where she and Dina were inseparable, more than friends, more than lovers. Where they were close and intimate and in love.

Ellie didn’t even hear Dina’s steps come back up the stairs. She was too busy in the darkest recesses of her mind, trying desperately to store her memories of the girl in question. Her delectable voice cut through her thoughts.

“Wow, it’s really coming down hard now, huh?”

Ellie’s head immediately turned to the source, and she found a calming view before her.

The window, still brushed with the frost from outside, was now tinted a beautiful golden orange-yellow, the rays almost blinding the way they bore down on the window and entered through the layer of ice attached to the glass. The sunlight was cutting through a break in the clouds, and the penetrating light hit through the trees and against their cabin.

Dina’s silhouette stood at the corner of the window, casting a shadow along the wooden floor. Ellie was able to admire that slim shape – darkened by the lighting – and the way those hips trailed. Everything about Dina was so utterly attractive to her. It was almost unbearable at times.

Golden light from the outside that peered in blended with Dina’s form, that slim waist and petite figure, those thin arms reaching out to touch the windowsill, merging in with the light bouncing off the edges of her body. Ellie was mesmerized by how beautiful she looked in that light, in the sudden, unexpected sunset. Neither of them expected to see anything so beautiful in an ugly time like that one, but Ellie drunk the moment in hungrily.

When the clouds passed over the sunlight once again, the sudden break in the clouds covered in just minutes, Dina sighed as the world turned dark again, and turned away to head into the kitchen, bags in hand.

“Dina, wait.”

It was almost as if her mind, her voice was speaking for her. Like she had no control of the words she said.

She turned back, looking questionably at Ellie, but smiling nonetheless.

“Can we talk?”

Her heart began to race almost as if her body was panicking at the words spilling uncontrollably from her mouth.

“Sure,” she replied simply. “What about?” She walked towards her, placing the bags on the table beside the couch, sitting gently on the armrest opposite to the one Ellie leaned on.

Ellie gulped audibly, her foot beginning to bounce rapidly at the anxiety that swept over her like a bag drifting in the wind and covering a branch in a small tree. The sound of the wind hitting the window and shaking the trees was the only thing making any noise, as the silence was painful between them.

It took the most amount of courage she’d ever mustered to begin talking.

“I’ve just been thinking,” Ellie began, her voice shaking with fear and anxiety, so much so that she had to pause to stabilize herself. “Like, about the whole dance thing…”

“Glad I’m not the only one,” Dina cut her off gently, making Ellie turn in complete surprise at her statement.

_She’s been thinking about it?_

“Oh, uh, yeah…” Ellie tried to continue, swallowing the shock and fighting through it. “Yeah, so… I just… I don’t even know.” She sighed with frustration, giving up. Her mind had been so quick to put her in this position without hesitation, and now she was speechless. “What have you been thinking about it?”

“Well,” Dina said breathily, eyebrows raising slightly as she looked down. “A lot. Even if I wasn’t really thinking straight, I’m not sorry that I kissed you. I’m not sorry and I don’t regret it. Not even a little.”

The way she said it with such confidence blew Ellie away, like a giant wind in the worst of storms. She’d completely swiped her legs from under her, and she was plummeting to the ground at a rapid rate. She was stunned – her words were the opposite of what she’d been thinking the entire time since it happened. Despite the fact that it had only been the previous night, her mind had been torturing her with it enough.

“You didn’t…?” Ellie was clearly taken aback, as hard as she tried to fight that.

“No, El, I didn’t,” she seemed upset at the fact that she doubted her. “Why would I?”

“Well, I just…” She struggled for a reason, an answer, any kind of response. “You just… You never really made any moves, not like that. You never kissed me. You flirted with me, sure, but you kinda flirt with everyone…” Ellie said, blatantly. When she saw the slightly insulted look on her face, Ellie immediately scrambled to explain herself. “Not in a bad way! You’ve just got this… flirty nature…” she shook her head harshly, giving up on re-explaining it with a huff of frustration. “Look, what I’m trying to say is that you’re attractive, crazy attractive. And you embrace it and other people drool over you. You’ve had multiple ex-boyfriends; I didn’t really expect you to be into… someone like me.”

“Someone like you?” Dina asked, mouth parted, eyes narrowed. Her voice was gentle, and she almost seemed affronted.

“Yeah,” Ellie continued, shyly. “Like, a girl who’s quiet and just… shut out and I don’t ever talk to anyone and I just sit in my own corner and you’re just, like, the opposite. You’re outgoing and flirty and social and I’m not. You’re passionate and expressive and I’m not. I’m shut off to everyone.”

“Except me.”

Dina’s words, once again, took her completely off-guard. She was right – Dina was the only other person besides Joel and Riley that broke through her walls long ago; who knew almost everything about Ellie, learned her in and out over the course of nearly six years. She was the second person to ever reach so close to her heart.

“Except you,” Ellie repeated, her words just barely laced in her breath.

“Ellie,” Dina sighed, readjusting her position so that she was sitting on the couch beside her, facing her. Dina’s cold hand found her way into hers. “You’re not as cold and menacing as you think you are. You’re not as private as you think you are, either. I’ve known you for how long? And you really think I can’t read you like a kid’s book.”

The way Dina’s murky pools for eyes stared into hers ignited shivers through her body, prompting goosebumps to rise on her skin underneath her clothes.

“People don’t know you like I know you,” She continued. “They’ve never gotten close like I have. They don’t _know_ what happens in here–” she gently pushed her finger against Ellie’s temple. “–or here.” Then, against her chest, at the center point of her heart. “But I do. I know you, better than you know yourself. And that’s why I kissed you.”

Ellie could only give her a perplexed look. The space between them had been shrinking, and it squeezed her chest and almost made her feel claustrophobic. The tension was palpable.

“You don’t get it, do you?”

Again, silence. There wasn’t much she could say; the words were glued to the back of her throat.

Dina sighed, downcast, staring down at the wooden planks in the floor. But, after just a few moments, she lifted her head back up to resume her deep stair into Ellie’s forested eyes, and before she could even process anything else, Dina was leaning in quickly, and it only took seconds for her lips to be on hers.

Her body had moved forward and a hand had found its place against Ellie’s cheek. Those soft lips were against hers, moving, begging for a response. Ellie had been around the block before – the initial shock of feeling Dina against her had subsided in her mind, in her alternate reality, in her memories from the night before. It took a moment, but Ellie’s lips were greedily pressing back.

They stayed like that for nearly an entire minute, kissing each other, gently, then harder, then gently again. Dina’s kisses were dizzying – Ellie thought she’d be on the floor before it was over. Her hands had landed on her waist, just like from the previous night, and one of Dina’s hands stayed firmly on her face while the other moved from her neck to her shoulders.

There was no feeling in the world like kissing Dina. She would never get tired of it.

When Dina pulled away slowly, panting for breath and face red with blood surged underneath her skin, she took a moment to compose herself.

“I like doing that,” Dina’s hands dragged down from her shoulders to her chest. “I _want_ to keep doing that.”

Ellie only released a breathy chuckle. The intimacy had completely robbed her of the air in her lungs. The words at the back of her throat had melted and sank back down, vanishing.

“No one knows you like I know you,” she repeated. “And no one knows me like you know me.” Her hand found its way back up to Ellie’s cheek, and instinctually, Ellie leaned right against it. “Maybe I do flirt with a lot, but who do I come home to all the time? Who do I go out of my way to see and spend time with? I thought it was obvious before I even kissed you.”

“How was it supposed to be obvious?” Ellie demanded, gently. “You went out with Jesse just a few weeks ago.”

“He was the one who made me realize. And then I saw you with Kat, and I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Kat?” Ellie’s eyes narrowed in confusion.

Dina nodded, her voice pressing and concerned. “You were joking around with her on the group patrol, remember? I _know_ you guys dated a while ago. I _know_ it’s over. I _know_ I was dating Jesse. But you don’t know how deep that got under my skin. And then I went over Jesse’s after the patrol, I ranted to him, and we fought about it, and that was it.” She blew air out her nose. “He was nothing like you. And I never felt anything. Not with him, not with all those other guys. But whenever I would go to your house, or saw you out in public, or went out on patrol with you, I felt everything I didn’t feel with them with you.”

Ellie was floored at her confession. But she didn’t interrupt, she just let her continue.

“That’s why I kissed you. When I danced with you, everything felt right. I was waiting for you to come the whole night, I wanted to ask you to dance. I wanted to have a few drinks with you. I wanted to just see you,” she admitted, her voice breaking ever so slightly, but Ellie caught it. “I was hoping you would realize after that.”

“This whole time…” She was wide-eyed, in complete disbelief. “You felt all of that? And never once talked to me about it?”

Dina looked worried then. “Well, no, that’s not it…” She had to recollect herself. “I just didn’t want to do anything stupid. I didn’t want to kiss you all the months ago and scare you off, or make you think I was coming off too strong. You’re my best friend, Ellie. You’re practically my only real, good friend. You think I could just risk it like that?”

“Yeah,” Ellie’s eyebrows cocked, her face lightened and a faux smile reigned. She was almost angry with disbelief. “That’s the same reason I didn’t say anything. I figured if you liked me, I would know, immediately. You’re not one to hide anything.”

Looking away, the shorter girl sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Ellie’s tone immediately eased then, realizing Dina’s raw emotion and regret. “It’s fine,” she moved forward to take Dina’s cheek into her palm.

When Dina looked up, it was like the roles had completely reversed. Ellie was the dominant one in the situation, looking down at her with reassurance and guidance, with Dina staring up at her with completely vulnerability and complete helplessness under Ellie’s gaze. Just like Ellie had looked at her the night before, and just minutes ago. Like Ellie was Dina’s absolute weakness.

That’s when Ellie took the plunge. Leaning in, she, ever so softly, placed her lips against Dina, kissing her for the third time. Unlike Ellie, Dina didn’t freeze up. Her lips were immediately respondent, her eyes closing and those lashes sitting pretty against her upper cheek.

They didn’t even bother to make dinner after that. Ellie led a flustered Dina up the stairs and to the biggest bedroom in the cabin. It had been late then – more time had passed then they realized. The world had become even darker as the sun completely vanished, no light peering through the clouds at all. Everything was dark, and the snowflakes continued to fall from the sky.

Ellie had asked Dina if she was hungry, and she simply shook her head, saying that she’d had enough discourse for one day. So, Ellie helped her up to bed. Truthfully, she was beat, too. She was exhausted from treading through snow and ice early that morning, only to end the day stuck in a blizzard, barricaded in an old, chilly cabin, confessing her feelings to the girl of her dreams.

It was safe to say it had been a pretty wild day.

At the end of it all, Ellie found herself wrapped up under thick covers with Dina, who was shamelessly burying herself in her warmth, hands venturing under clothes and searching for heat against Ellie’s firm body. Her head was tucked safely into the crook of Ellie’s neck, resting atop Ellie’s arm that had been gently wrapped around her shoulders.

They held each other close on that cold night, and despite all of the ruckus of the day, Ellie could confidently say that there was no ending she would’ve rather had than that.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!  
> This is another of the Tumblr requests I received for these two.
> 
> My tumblr handle is @lmontyy, and I take any and all requests, (so long as they're not unreasonable or crazy!) but I'm very easygoing when it comes to writing, and do enjoy writing for others. Any and all questions or inquiries may be directed to my inbox here or on tumblr. :)
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


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